Tag Archives: Warcraft 2: Beyond The Dark Portal

Coast of Bones is the 8th scenario of the human campaign in the Warcraft 2 expansion set, Beyond The Dark Portal. Your objectives are, as is often the case, to destroy all your enemies.

You start off with a small force on a barren piece of land, and you have a few ships that will help you move to another place where resources are hopefully present.

In the screenshot above, you can see the entire map, enabled thanks to the on screen cheat. Your enemies are the white orcs to the west, purple to the southwest, and yellow to the south. The white ones are not very well-defended, allowing you to take over their base, and there is also a spare gold mine on the same piece of land. The purple orcs are better defended, and the yellow orcs are tough and have a strong naval presence.

You have two dwarven demolition squads. You can put them on a transport and use them to take down a couple of cannon towers. The first place to land is shown above.

This will allow you to take down the yellow cannon tower on the island, which is in a strategic location and monitors sea traffic in the area.

Land the second demolition squad on the northwestern landmass.

Then, use it to destroy the white cannon tower that guards the entrance to the white base.

With the cannon tower out of the way, you can now ferry your troops to the white base, and engage the enemy.

After killing the defenders, take down any towers, and then finish off the white orcs by destroying their buildings.

Establish your own base, building a town hall, farms and a lumber mill.

Establish your economy by having peasants mine gold and harvest lumber, and keep building farms to sustain your base’s growth.

Invest in your defences, by manning each entry point to the base and setting up towers to assist them. Continue to grow by building a barracks and upgrading your town hall to a keep.

Build stables to be able to train knights, and build a gnomish inventor to prepare for a naval presence (you will need gnomish flying machines to sniff out enemy giant turtles).

There’s an oil patch to the southwest. It’s pretty close to purple’s base, but is also quite convenient. It’s a good place to start setting up oil operations.

Build a shipyard there, but be prepared to face some heavy resistance from purple and yellow orc ships. One or two well-placed ballistas should keep them at bay (pun not intended).

At this point you will also see more activity from the yellow orcs, who will frequently make landings at the east side of the base. Make sure you are always well-defended.

My first shipyard couldn’t withstand the strength of the enemy naval forces, so I had to build another. I also reinforced my defences with a second ballista, seen on the right in the above screenshot. The ballista is out of range of enemy ships, and they conveniently get stuck trying to attack it.

When the main gold mine runs out of gold, you can build a town hall and start using the second one.

Continue investing in your naval operations by building a second shipyard, a refinery, and a foundry. Make sure you have a steady supply of oil.

Once you have a few battleships, you can begin to attack coastal buildings. Weakening purple’s naval presence is a good start.

When the oil platform runs out of oil, there’s another oil patch to the southeast you can use.

Be careful though – it’s an easy target for purple and yellow orc ships, and also for yellow orc troops.

Continue attacking purple’s coastal area…

…but keep your own operations safe. The central oil platform is an easy target for ships, land troops, and death knights’ whirlwinds.

As the tide of the battle permits, destroy the last remnants of purple’s naval presence.

Continue the attack towards the yellow orcs’ island coast, but be careful – it’s easy for your ships to get trapped in the narrow canals, in which they are easy prey for catapults and whirlwinds.

Make a landing into purple orc territory.

They may be grounded, but they can still put up a fight.

Bring in additional troops if you need.

Put an end to any death knights, because they weaken your forces pretty quickly.

Then work on paralysing their production by destroying strategic buildings, such as the fortress.

In this scenario, orcs usually don’t use air units; but they may do that when they get desperate. Having a couple of archers handy is a good idea.

With most of the purple forces neutralised, send fresh ships into the heart of the yellow orcs’ gulf.

Destroy the naval defences there.

Once the ships are destroyed, focus on destroying coastal buildings to completely annihilate yellow’s naval presence.

You will also find that many other buildings and forces are within reach of your battleships from the gulf, so you can easily bring the yellow orcs to their knees.

Complete the last preparations for an invasion by destroying orc units and buildings along the rest of the coast.

With that done, you can now make a landing on the yellow orcs’ island.